There are three tanking talents, all of which are entry-level talents, that form the foundation of Death Knight tanking – Blade Barrier, Toughness, and Anticipation. Every tank build that you create should feature all three of these talents of power leveling. Blade Barrier and Anticipation in particular are extremely potent and boost the primary function of Death Knight tanking : avoidance.

 

The first thing you must do to tank for power leveling, even before worrying about your gear, is select the right talents. Contrary to popular belief, there is no "tank tree" for Death Knights. Death Knights, given the right combination of equipment, can tank from any tree. Rather than giving you a simple template to replicate in game, I've chosen instead to outline some of the more effective tanking talents by style. There are so many Death Knight builds out there that even amongst the established builds on power leveling, there is no "tank build". More than any other class, Death Knights encourage ingenuity and individuality when spending your talent points. Once you've read over the guide, then you can go about the business of selecting the talents best-suited for you.

 

As a side note, Blood Aura probably doesn't heal enough to justify you spending talent points in it. Unfortunately, you can't really control when the Bloodworms appear, but they heal for a sizeable amount, especially if you happen to have Vampiric Blood up at the time. Some tanks may wait for Bloodworms to appear before hitting their Vampiric Blood, but often the encounter itself will dictate when you need to be using your cooldowns. Your mileage may vary, especially after patch 3.0.8. The power leveling is useful for every character.